Can entropy be versed?

[DarkRange55]

For all of you that like to ponder…

 

[DarkRange55]

Since no one has either shown interest or bothered to comment on this, I suppose I will just add, if anyone cares…

Heat death matches what we currently know, but so does "the big rip" (if dark energy increases over time). The big crunch is not ruled out, but would take new physics.

Order, entropy and disorder aren't what people claim in common parlance: high entropy doesn't mean low order in the way that most people think. If you look at a coffee cup with some milk and you create some turbulence that looks completely disordered and then when you stir it, then it looks uniform, it looks ordered but that actually has the highest entropy.

Reversed implies that time exists. "The last question" is a great story. We do not know if our universe is closed, nor do we know what will be able to do in trillions of years.

Time is an illusion caused by the limitations of our consciousness, which can only experience one slice of one thread of the multiverse (that we call the present and call reality).
Time, and entropy, are driven by our consciousness's effort to make sense of that slice, and it is a lot simpler to treat time as if it does exist and that there is only one reality that flows from slice to slice.

 

[sserafim]

In a closed system, entropy cannot be reversed.

"Furthermore, entropy cannot be destroyed by any means at any scale (entropy is conserved in ideal, reversible processes and irreversibly generated in real processes), and thus, entropy cannot overall decrease, but only overall increase."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7517180/#:~:text=Furthermore, entropy cannot be destroyed,decrease, but only overall increase.

 

[Adûnâi]

Time is an illusion caused by the limitations of our consciousness, which can only experience one slice of one thread of the multiverse (that we call the present and call reality).
Time, and entropy, are driven by our consciousness's effort to make sense of that slice

I never understood this point at all. What do they mean by separating consciousness from being begotten by evolution? How can there be a reality that doesn't get perceived by a brain that has evolved in that reality to begin with?

nor do we know what will be able to do in trillions of years.

Exactly! That's why I have no idea why so many people talk about entropy. It's like cavemen discussing the intricacies of sex in big city. Or infusoriae (the Russian for amoebas?) pondering the complexities of Matryoshka brains.

I

In a closed system, entropy cannot be reversed.

Isn't it the opposite? Entropy is reversed in closed systems all the time - that's how this planet's ecosystem has appeared and increased in complexity.

 

[sserafim]

I never understood this point at all. What do they mean by separating consciousness from being begotten by evolution? How can there be a reality that doesn't get perceived by a brain that has evolved in that reality to begin with?



Exactly! That's why I have no idea why so many people talk about entropy. It's like cavemen discussing the intricacies of sex in big city. Or infusoriae (the Russian for amoebas?) pondering the complexities of Matryoshka brains.

I
Isn't it the opposite? Entropy is reversed in closed systems all the time - that's how this planet's ecosystem has appeared and increased in complexity.

"In a closed system, entropy cannot be reversed. All closed systems will therefore eventually move toward high entropy as changes between events develop. Entropy will undoubtedly fall due to statistical likelihood in the very short future, but this is highly uncommon."

https://byjus.com/question-answer/i...d system, entropy,but this is highly uncommon.

 

[DarkRange55]

"In a closed system, entropy cannot be reversed. All closed systems will therefore eventually move toward high entropy as changes between events develop. Entropy will undoubtedly fall due to statistical likelihood in the very short future, but this is highly uncommon."

https://byjus.com/question-answer/is-reverse-entropy-possible/#:~:text=In a closed system, entropy,but this is highly uncommon.

We do not know if the universe is an open or closed system…
On a quantum level, everything appears to be reversible.
so far there is no evidence that the regions between galaxies contain sections of negative tendencies.

 

[sserafim]

We do not know if the universe is an open or closed system…
On a quantum level, everything appears to be reversible.
so far there is no evidence that the regions between galaxies contain sections of negative tendencies.

Cooked meat can't become raw again, a cookie can't turn back into eggs, flour, sugar, and butter

 

[DarkRange55]

Cooked meat can't become raw again, a cookie can't turn back into eggs, flour, sugar, and butter

So you're referring to the macroscopic scale… I'll elaborate more in detail later.

 

[DarkRange55]

Cooked meat can't become raw again, a cookie can't turn back into eggs, flour, sugar, and butter

This macroscopic irreversibility has a common explanation: during such a reverted process, entropy of the whole supersystem (system+environment) would have to decrease, which is extremely improbable for the supersystem to do. It could do it if we could somehow revert all velocities (and magnetic field components) at some time, but we can't do it in practice and it does not happen spontaneously (that would break the fundamental equations).
We know that all fundamental forces are reversible
Our best theories have fundamental equations that are reversible, meaning when velocities are reversed, the system retraces its past states. We can perform the reversal in real experiment in simple cases like spins precessing in magnetic field, and in that case, the system can be said to be reversible. But in general, we cannot do it.
For example, we can't revert velocities of all gas molecules or, in case of radiating charged particle, revert magnetic component of radiation to make it all go back and be absorbed by the particle.
In case we cannot do the reversal and it does not happen naturally either (equations do not predict such reversal), it is microscopically irreversible in practice, and then it is natural that the system appears macroscopically irreversible too.

There's a distinction between microscopic reversibility and macroscopic reversibility. Or if you will, a difference between something being irreversible in theory versus irreversible in practice. (Or absolutely irreversible versus probabilistically irreversible.)
A hopefully relatable analogy:
Imagine that you have a large number of coins in front of you. They all start heads-up (obverse visible). Now imagine that at each "step" you choose a coin randomly and flip it. That is, if it's heads-up, you make it heads-down, and if it's heads-down you make it heads-up. Each step is reversible. If you flip a coin heads-down in one step, you can flip it heads-up in the next. But actually running the experiment will accord with your (likely) intuition -- if you choose coins at random, the coins become a random (approximately equal) distribution of heads-up and heads-down. Even though each individual step is reversible, on the macroscopic scale the combination of steps is not: if you start with an all heads-up state, you never go back to that same state.
Theoretically, you could. It's possible that you just so happen to randomly get a streak where you pick only those coins which are heads-down, and flip them heads-up. Or vice versa: only select heads-up coins and flip them heads-down. But since you're picking randomly, that's a very, very low probability case. And it gets even less probable the more coins you have to flip.

Physics systems are similar. Most macroscopic systems are composed of a large number of individual particles/elements. While the individual interactions of the particles are reversible (like the individual coin flips), on a global, macroscopic scale the system isn't. Indeed, all of those interactions could theoretically run in just the right way to revert the system to exactly the previous state, but the probabilities of that are small. You could be talking about 10^20 or 10^30 particles, each of which need to be properly reversed. While the chance of any individual interaction being reversed could be quite high, the chance that all of the interactions are reversed in just the right way to put the macroscopic system back into a previous state is mind-bogglingly low.
There's different formulations of entropy, but in many that's what entropy is -- it's the measure of the "probability" of the state (Boltzmann's entropy formula). When someone says that things proceed from low entropy states to high entropy states, they're basically saying that things proceed from a low probability states to higher probability states. But the second law of thermodynamics is a statistical one, not an absolute one. "Entropy always increases" is of a slightly different character than "energy cannot be created or destroyed". It's not a hard-and-fast rule which can never be broken, it's just
10^20 to 1 odds that it won't be.
Irreversibility comes from the thermodynamics: the probability that we return to the same state in any reasonable amount of time is extremely small. In more technical terms: the entropy is increasing. The proof that the irreversible macroscopic behavior can emerge from the reversible microscopic behavior is known as the Boltzmann H-theorem.

This question is asking why, if at the quantum realm of particles, processes can happen in reverse (particle interactions obey time reversal transformations), why does macroscopic matter (which is also made up of these particles) behave irreversibly?
This apparent contradiction, namely that the thermodynamic arrow of time (entropy) points in one direction, though particle interactions do not follow this rule, is the subject matter of what is known as Loschmidt's paradox. Whether there is a resolution to this paradox

1 is debatable, and from the above link
"Loschmidt's paradox, also known as the reversibility paradox, irreversibility paradox or Umkehreinwand, is the objection that it should not be possible to deduce an irreversible process from time-symmetric dynamics. This puts the time reversal symmetry of (almost) all known low-level fundamental physical processes at odds with any attempt to infer from them the second law of thermodynamics which describes the behaviour of macroscopic systems. Both of these are well-accepted principles in physics, with sound observational and theoretical support, yet they seem to be in conflict, hence the paradox."
"Any process that happens regularly in the forward direction of time but rarely or never in the opposite direction, such as entropy increasing in an isolated system, defines what physicists call an arrow of time in nature. This term only refers to an observation of an asymmetry in time; it is not meant to suggest an explanation for such asymmetries. Loschmidt's paradox is equivalent to the question of how it is possible that there could be a thermodynamic arrow of time given time-symmetric fundamental laws, since time-symmetry implies that for any process compatible with these fundamental laws, a reversed version that looked exactly like a film of the first process played backwards would be equally compatible with the same fundamental laws, and would even be equally probable if one were to pick the system's initial state randomly from the phase space of all possible states for that system."
Current research in dynamical systems offers one possible mechanism for obtaining irreversibility from reversible systems.
"The central argument is based on the claim that the correct way to study the dynamics of macroscopic systems is to study the transfer operator corresponding to the microscopic equations of motion. It is then argued that the transfer operator is not unitary (i.e. is not reversible) but has eigenvalues whose magnitude is strictly less than one; these eigenvalues corresponding to decaying physical states."
Though this method has various problems and works well for only a handful of models that have exact solutions.

Another popular resolution to this paradox is to consider that CPT invariance is an exact symmetry, but CP and T are not. Therefore, it's possible that this asymmetry invoked the second law of thermodynamics (since the universe is primarily dominated by matter instead of anti-matter).

 

[obligatoryshackles]

Well, if you take advantage of the energy that is generated by the negative emotions of adolescent girls...

 

[DarkRange55]

Well, if you take advantage of the energy that is generated by the negative emotions of adolescent girls...
View attachment 131314

 

[Homo erectus]

Entropy... To repair bad karma, more bad karma is created.

 

[DarkRange55]

Entropy... To repair bad karma, more bad karma is created.

Lol

 

[sserafim]

Entropy... To repair bad karma, more bad karma is created.

Wdym?

 

[Homo erectus]

Wdym?

To repair oneself, one have to draw energy from outside. It's just exporting and amplifying the bad aura elsewhere.

 

[DarkRange55]

To repair oneself, one have to draw energy from outside. It's just exporting and amplifying the bad aura elsewhere.

The bow gives life by ending life for another. Life itself supports life by ending life for another. (This is fundamentally true down to the laws of physics. Entropy is always increasing. In order to live, we consume and compete for energy. Carnivores eat herbivores. Herbivores eat photosynthesizers. Photosynthesizers eat energy from dying stars. Stars eat energy from disappearing atoms.)

On aura, I am not sure, but I suspect that there is more than just collective subconscious.
Recent work has shown that embryonic development is guided by electrical fields, and my guess is that several of these phenomena (chi, chakras, auras, meridians, acupuncture, etc.) are related to the patterns of cell types in the developing embryo and the resulting patterns of cells in tissues...

I think people have "aura" I guess which are distinct but I think that aura is just people seeing a manifestation of your subconscious whether it's in a corporal language that is so strong that it exudes a distinct emotion and personality or other less scientific and more kind of mystical thing. But overall I still think this so called aura or soul or whatever is called is either in the brain of an individual (as in being is subconscious) or being the result of a connection between brains of two different people but that might imply the "soul" of a person would vary depending on who's perceiving it and there constantly changing and evolving. It would be messy and complicated but things are complex so why not.

The universe runs more on atoms fusing than on atoms splitting, but many things, such as black, do not involve either splitting or fusing lf atoms, and atoms are thought to make up only around 5% of the mans in the universe un the first place… stars and gravitation collapse power the universe.
Karma seems to have something to it - "he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."

 

[Homo erectus]

The bow gives life by ending life for another. Life itself supports life by ending life for another. (This is fundamentally true down to the laws of physics. Entropy is always increasing. In order to live, we consume and compete for energy. Carnivores eat herbivores. Herbivores eat photosynthesizers. Photosynthesizers eat energy from dying stars. Stars eat energy from disappearing atoms.)

On aura, I am not sure, but I suspect that there is more than just collective subconscious.
Recent work has shown that embryonic development is guided by electrical fields, and my guess is that several of these phenomena (chi, chakras, auras, meridians, acupuncture, etc.) are related to the patterns of cell types in the developing embryo and the resulting patterns of cells in tissues...

I think people have "aura" I guess which are distinct but I think that aura is just people seeing a manifestation of your subconscious whether it's in a corporal language that is so strong that it exudes a distinct emotion and personality or other less scientific and more kind of mystical thing. But overall I still think this so called aura or soul or whatever is called is either in the brain of an individual (as in being is subconscious) or being the result of a connection between brains of two different people but that might imply the "soul" of a person would vary depending on who's perceiving it and there constantly changing and evolving. It would be messy and complicated but things are complex so why not.

The universe runs more on atoms fusing than on atoms splitting, but many things, such as black, do not involve either splitting or fusing lf atoms, and atoms are thought to make up only around 5% of the mans in the universe un the first place… stars and gravitation collapse power the universe.
Karma seems to have something to it - "he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."

If the universe is traveling in some higher dimensions, all the physical constants and laws may change when the universe is in a different place. That might in fact have been the case. In the past, Newton's Laws were "sufficient" because people had other channels to access the truths. They didn't have a crisis in understand to effect a scientific revolution. Somehow the old channels were subsequently blocked. The old practices of science became "occult". People had to invent many funny particles to explain the world.

 

[DarkRange55]

If the universe is traveling in some higher dimensions, all the physical constants and laws may change when the universe is in a different place. That might in fact have been the case. In the past, Newton's Laws were "sufficient" because people had other channels to access the truths. They didn't have a crisis in understand to effect a scientific revolution. Somehow the old channels were subsequently blocked. The old practices of science became "occult". People had to invent many funny particles to explain the world.

Newtons Laws are still accepted today. It was his explanation of the mechanics of gravity that changed. Basically how it works, not why it works. The universe is expanding but what do you mean by higher dimensions? There is no evidence for additional temporal or spacial dimensions. The closest you could argue would be the theoretical 9 unseen quantum dimensions of string theory but I have my scientific issues with string theory but even then they are at the quantum level.

If the universe is traveling in some higher dimensions, all the physical constants and laws may change when the universe is in a different place. That might in fact have been the case. In the past, Newton's Laws were "sufficient" because people had other channels to access the truths. They didn't have a crisis in understand to effect a scientific revolution. Somehow the old channels were subsequently blocked. The old practices of science became "occult". People had to invent many funny particles to explain the world.

I mean Newton was an alchemist, if thats what you're referring to. They didn't have the instruments we do today and the 1930's to observe sub-atomic particles. Whats wrong with more particles being discovered other than its kind of boring at this point how many they've found?

 

[Homo erectus]

News Laws are still accepted today. It was his explanation of the mechanics of gravity that changed. Basically how it works, not why it works. The universe is expanding but what do you mean by higher dimensions? There is no evidence for additional temporal or spacial dimensions. The closest you could argue would be the theoretical 9 unseen quantum dimensions of string theory but I have my scientific issues with string theory but even then they are at the quantum level.

String theory might have actually come from a pre-reset old world. People then were good at understanding the world in terms of waves, vibrations, acoustics, electromagnetism, geometry, etc. In doing so they probably had actual or theoretical access or understanding of the higher dimensions.

 

[DarkRange55]

String theory might have actually come from a pre-reset old world. People then were good at understanding the world in terms of waves, vibrations, acoustics, electromagnetism, geometry, etc. In doing so they probably had actual or theoretical access or understanding of the higher dimensions.

Vibrations is a pseudo-science



If you're referring to lost civilizations: we are very good at detecting traces so a global civilization such as ours would not remain hidden. There are other possibilities — for example, civilization that went off into space, could have raised its footprint on earth. Or local civilizations, less advanced than our could have remained undetected if they had stayed in the coastal areas that got drowned at the end of the ice age. Also, some of the civilizations that we do not know of were more advanced than we give them credit for — the antikythera mechanism is my favorite example with some of the incredible stonework in the Andes mountains. Also impressive.

Silurian hypothesis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But if you were referring to the Silurian hypothesis - at our scale of civilization. There would be a strange layer in the sediment that would show traces of plastics, metals, concrete, or isotope variations. Amber is roughly as durable with many plastics and many millions of pieces of amber have been discovered without finding any fossilized plastics, no gold coins in sediment layers, deposits of stainless steel artifacts… however, a civilization, the scaled the Roman Empire could've been hidden by the passage of time.

For one example of an issue with string theory: The explanation for three generations of matter based on an index of six on a calabi-yau manifold at every point in space and time. I could add more

Calabi–Yau manifold - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sserafim]

Newtons Laws are still accepted today. It was his explanation of the mechanics of gravity that changed. Basically how it works, not why it works. The universe is expanding but what do you mean by higher dimensions? There is no evidence for additional temporal or spacial dimensions. The closest you could argue would be the theoretical 9 unseen quantum dimensions of string theory but I have my scientific issues with string theory but even then they are at the quantum level.

I mean Newton was an alchemist, if thats what you're referring to. They didn't have the instruments we do today and the 1930's to observe sub-atomic particles. Whats wrong with more particles being discovered other than its kind of boring at this point how many they've found?

I want to be an alchemist as well

 

[Homo erectus]

I want to be an alchemist as well

People seems to have played with mercury very early on. If gold mining was the goal of early human slavery, this makes sense.

 

[DarkRange55]

People seems to have played with mercury very early on. If gold mining was the goal of early human slavery, this makes sense.

People seems to have played with mercury very early on. If gold mining was the goal of early human slavery, this makes sense.

Shortly after aluminum was first purified as a metal, Napoleon had a dinner at which he served his ordinary guests on plates made of gold, while he and his guest of honor ate on plates made of aluminum.

The contrast between extremely dense gold and extremely light aluminum must have been dramatic.


I've heard that they're constantly finding more gold, and they actually don't know how much is under the Earth.
We currently mine about 3000 tons a year and with today's technology about 50,000 more tons would be economically recoverable, or 15 to 20 years' worth.
There is a lot more gold out there – something like 20 million tons in seawater, if I remember, but it is not currently economically recoverable.
And there is a massive amount of gold in Earth's core, but that is way beyond our ability to extract.

People are taking it face value that gold companies say it's a very very limited resource, but I've heard a rumor that they may have figured out 50 to 200 years ago that there is a treasure trove of gold using some new technology. Just like with fracking technology in America, they found they could be completely oil independent. Gold companies have a tremendous interest in not presenting that information.
Given the length that some companies have gone to to appear to have much more gold than they really do, I am skeptical that such technologies currently exist and are being hidden.
(However, future technologies are another story)

We can be pretty sure that the diamond companies are controlling the supply, and there could be a greater supply of diamonds, too. we know with certainty that they are mining more gold every year than the previous year.
Gold production has been pretty flat the last few years, but over the longer term this has been true.


Gold is primarily formed in the extreme conditions of supernova explosions and neutron star collisions. These events produce the high temperatures and pressures necessary for the fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones like gold. While some gold may have been created during the Big Bang, it's much less significant compared to the amounts produced in supernovas and neutron star collisions.

 

[Homo erectus]

Vibrations is a pseudo-science



If you're referring to lost civilizations: we are very good at detecting traces so a global civilization such as ours would not remain hidden. There are other possibilities — for example, civilization that went off into space, could have raised its footprint on earth. Or local civilizations, less advanced than our could have remained undetected if they had stayed in the coastal areas that got drowned at the end of the ice age. Also, some of the civilizations that we do not know of were more advanced than we give them credit for — the antikythera mechanism is my favorite example with some of the incredible stonework in the Andes mountains. Also impressive.

Silurian hypothesis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But if you were referring to the Silurian hypothesis - at our scale of civilization. There would be a strange layer in the sediment that would show traces of plastics, metals, concrete, or isotope variations. Amber is roughly as durable with many plastics and many millions of pieces of amber have been discovered without finding any fossilized plastics, no gold coins in sediment layers, deposits of stainless steel artifacts… however, a civilization, the scaled the Roman Empire could've been hidden by the passage of time.

For one example of an issue with string theory: The explanation for three generations of matter based on an index of six on a calabi-yau manifold at every point in space and time. I could add more

Calabi–Yau manifold - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I am actually fine with mainstream science. But I am also interested in alternative views of the world.

Shortly after aluminum was first purified as a metal, Napoleon had a dinner at which he served his ordinary guests on plates made of gold, while he and his guest of honor ate on plates made of aluminum.

The contrast between extremely dense gold and extremely light aluminum must have been dramatic.


I've heard that they're constantly finding more gold, and they actually don't know how much is under the Earth.
We currently mine about 3000 tons a year and with today's technology about 50,000 more tons would be economically recoverable, or 15 to 20 years' worth.
There is a lot more gold out there – something like 20 million tons in seawater, if I remember, but it is not currently economically recoverable.
And there is a massive amount of gold in Earth's core, but that is way beyond our ability to extract.

People are taking it face value that gold companies say it's a very very limited resource, but I've heard a rumor that they may have figured out 50 to 200 years ago that there is a treasure trove of gold using some new technology. Just like with fracking technology in America, they found they could be completely oil independent. Gold companies have a tremendous interest in not presenting that information.
Given the length that some companies have gone to to appear to have much more gold than they really do, I am skeptical that such technologies currently exist and are being hidden.
(However, future technologies are another story)

We can be pretty sure that the diamond companies are controlling the supply, and there could be a greater supply of diamonds, too. we know with certainty that they are mining more gold every year than the previous year.
Gold production has been pretty flat the last few years, but over the longer term this has been true.


Gold is primarily formed in the extreme conditions of supernova explosions and neutron star collisions. These events produce the high temperatures and pressures necessary for the fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones like gold. While some gold may have been created during the Big Bang, it's much less significant compared to the amounts produced in supernovas and neutron star collisions.

That makes sense. If there is huge quantity of gold on Earth, there is a good reason for some higher beings to enslave human for mining work.

 

[DarkRange55]

I am actually fine with mainstream science. But I am also interested in alternative views of the world.

That makes sense. If there is huge quantity of gold on Earth, there is a good reason for some higher beings to enslave human for mining work.

It's actually not necessarily that rare on a cosmic scale. Just as an example: 16 Psyche that contains enough gold to make every person on earth a billionaire.

16 Psyche - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's not the most useful metal - It's a soft metal, needs to be blended (alloyed) with other metals to be useful. It is very chemically inert but silver is more electrically conductive. And other noble metals are also inert. Gold's key use is as a very thin coating for electrical contacts, driven by corrosion resistance and solderability.

Noble metal - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The Gold Series: Uses and Demand (Part 3)

In the past two parts of this infographic series, we saw its rich history and also how mining and supply works. Here we look at how gold is used across the globe. Generally speaking, half of all gold demand is comprised of jewelry sales. About 10% of gold is used in technology, where it is […]

www.visualcapitalist.com

Gold's value is largely cultural and anthropological. Even today electronics use less gold than jewelry does.

In 2014 about 1/3 of the supply of gold was recycled.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-2021-visualized/

Silver and gold demand might increase, but I expect our ability to extract them to increase faster than demand. And when demand increases faster than supply, prices rise, people find alternatives, and demand falls. For example, with solar panels silver is now between 5% and 10% of the total cost, so there is a serious move afoot to switch to copper.

 

[DarkRange55]

I am actually fine with mainstream science. But I am also interested in alternative views of the world.

That makes sense. If there is huge quantity of gold on Earth, there is a good reason for some higher beings to enslave human for mining work.

I read what you said but just one more for the record books

 

[DarkRange55]

I never understood this point at all. What do they mean by separating consciousness from being begotten by evolution? How can there be a reality that doesn't get perceived by a brain that has evolved in that reality to begin with?



Exactly! That's why I have no idea why so many people talk about entropy. It's like cavemen discussing the intricacies of sex in big city. Or infusoriae (the Russian for amoebas?) pondering the complexities of Matryoshka brains.

I
Isn't it the opposite? Entropy is reversed in closed systems all the time - that's how this planet's ecosystem has appeared and increased in complexity.

separating consciousness from being begotten by evolution? How can there be a reality that doesn't get perceived by a brain that has evolved in that reality to begin with?

What do you mean?

 

[DarkRange55]

I never understood this point at all. What do they mean by separating consciousness from being begotten by evolution? How can there be a reality that doesn't get perceived by a brain that has evolved in that reality to begin with?



Exactly! That's why I have no idea why so many people talk about entropy. It's like cavemen discussing the intricacies of sex in big city. Or infusoriae (the Russian for amoebas?) pondering the complexities of Matryoshka brains.

I
Isn't it the opposite? Entropy is reversed in closed systems all the time - that's how this planet's ecosystem has appeared and increased in complexity.

For the iron stars - do protons decay after 10 duodecillion years leaving nothing but photons and leptons? Scientists don't yet know if protons decay or not and the standard model doesn't suggest that they should ever become unstable and decay. The short answer of why particles decay is become everything in the universe tends to a more stable state and you're more stable when you have less potential energy to spend. If you rip a neutron from a nucleus after approximately 15 minutes it will decay into a proton and emit and electron. Protons are lighter than neutrons so they have less energy and thus are more stable. Both are baryons so after the decay the type of particle remains unchanged, it's only the energy that decreases. But there's no other types of baryons that protons can decay into since it's the lightest of them so it's the most stable form.
The "degenerate era" 10^65 years after the Big Bang. All matter will slowly decay into iron. Iron has the lowest energy level out of all elements because it has the most tightly bound nuclei. Any element that is heavier than iron like copper, gold or plutonium will decay over time by nuclear fission into iron. Te (tellurium) has the longest half life which will decay in 10^24 years. Which is 160 trillion times longer than the age of the universe. Lighter elements like Li, He, C will take much longer to transform into iron through cold fusion. Thermonuclear fusion happens inside the core of stars (nuclei are so close together that the nuclear force surpasses the repulsive electromagnetic force and eventually sticks them together releases a lot of energy and creating heavier elements in the process) cold fusion occurs under any temperature and pressure. At cold temperatures nuclei are so far apart from each other that only quantum tunneling would make them pass through the electromagnetic force barrier. The denser the force barrier is the less likely the particle is to tunnel through it. The chance of this happening is incredibly small but not equal to zero. It is estimated that all matter will fuse into iron through cold fusion and quantum tunneling after 10^3200 years. All these iron atoms will come together in clumps to make iron stars. During this process it is thought that some black dwarfs will explode into supernovas after 10^1100 years because of the accumulating iron. Even though nee elements will arise from nuclear fusion during the explosions, they will transform into iron relatively fast. The iron stars will very slowly collapse into blackholes whether through gravity or quantity tunneling. And this process will take 10^10^76 years. Thats like writing a zero for each atom in the universe. Eventually these blackholes will evaporate through Hawking radiation in approximately 10^108 years at the most. What happens next is very speculative because we don't know what the role of dark energy is in all this. But everything left after the death of the blackholes are just photons and leptons like electrons and positrons flying around for almost eternity until a new Big Bang in about 10^10^10^76 years if we're looking at the probability of quantum fluctuations.